Today, many don’t exist unless there’s video. Today, many disbelieve your life experiences because your life experiences look nothing like theirs. Today, it’s difficult to have a voice when trust is greatly fractured. Yet, voice matters.
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Curtis Crisler
As a professor, I harp on voice because voice establishes who you are — your character and style. Also, voice does more — voice replicates the innate and raw manifestation of intuition with risks. It’s here, in the “intuition and risks” of life experiences, where you conquer, or resist, your need to succeed. It’s said many don’t succeed because they are scared to achieve success. I hear this a lot in communities of color. All people, especially POC can understand success comes from choices. What is important is you must feel validated in your community for you to visualize your place in it, to understand you have choices. That’s not true when life seems to go against you. Nevertheless, it swings back to voice and how you use it, to accomplish who you’ll become, to create more choices to choose from, in and outside your social-economic and cultural environments.
Put yourself in positions to create choices. Of course, help from advocates is needed. We can never be successful on our own. Give yourself permission to take effective risks because your voice garners more opportunities to possibilities. Many people find careers in the university. Although — the university is not for everyone. I tell that to my students. I didn’t think I was college material either.
Once I realized I had a voice, I used my voice to succeed and to fail better. I shared my voice with the university. You may not desire a university experience. That’s fine. There are plenty of plumbers, doctors, accountants, morticians, entrepreneurs, and engineers who make way more money than I do, and they enjoy their jobs. They enjoy what they do and why they do it. They acquire a workplace, trucks, employees they train, marketing, when all they were probably thinking about was, “Hey, I want to be a plumber like my dad.” It could be due to her father working constantly, the family always taken care of, and the daughter realizing she loves working with her hands. Who knows. You may say, “I don’t want to be a plumber.”
Realize this! I don’t care who it is, or whomever they are in the world, you will more than likely find everyone needs access to toilets, sinks, bathtubs, and showers be they queens, presidents, or the billions of people who work hard every day. If plumbing is your thing, you could be doing plumbing residentially, in a school district, a hospital, or your city county building. If you’re good, they will all want you. Look at the possible client/revenue stream there. Don’t think trade/vocational schools, entrepreneurial ventures with banks/CUs or local community groups, start-ups, etc. won’t vie to present you with marvelous opportunities? They will! Still, you must do the hard work to get the things you want. Life is not fair! Life is messy! No one gives you anything! If you want to be a YouTube Influencer, you bust your ass, work hard to get your channel, and have people subscribe. All the above takes hard work but making opportunities to work is what makes you successful. What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? How do you do it? What are you doing to get you to where you want to go? What are you doing when you don’t know what you want to do? These are thoughts incubating in your brain. At some point, you must act. You must use your voice in a way that satiates who you’ll become. In all honesty, I’m still becoming. It’s ongoing. I’m not done with who, what, why, how I am. This is lifelong.
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One choice-altering moment was moving from Gary to Fort Wayne to attend ITT Technical Institute after being recruited for Architectural Engineering to obtain an Associate Degree. I had one roommate. Two other friends moved to Fort Wayne, too. One didn’t like the experience, so he left. That’s how I ended up with two roommates. Eric came to live with us. My two roommates attended ITT for Electrical Engineering. At the time we left Gary, the mills were closing or cutting back. It was Reaganomics, and minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. People told us to leave, move, find jobs, find places that will give us choices. And work hard.
I was seventeen. One night, while cooking dinner, there was an excessive knock on our door. Eric answered. I was in the kitchen, listening, as Eric and Carlton talked to whomever it was at the door. I remember coming into the living room. The front door was open. Eric was on the stoop, outside the door. Carlton was by the threshold of the door, inside. I walked closer, knife in hand. Beyond my roommates were a couple of white, teenaged girls and four, white, teenaged guys. I came closer to the door with the knife. I heard the conversation. The lead guy regaled us with a narrative where the two girls were verbally accosted by some black men in a car. The lead guy was incensed. He wanted to know was it us that had accosted the girls with verbal threats, and he demanded an answer. I was perplexed, as I’m sure my roommates were, too. One of the girls said it wasn’t us. It didn’t look like us. We told them the same. To this day, I remember holding the kitchen knife’s handle harder. I remember we hadn’t talked smack. I think it’s because we were amazed, probably thinking, these dudes came to our house and knocked on the door for a fight? This didn’t happen in Gary. Eric was on the porch; he was the tallest. Carlton was on the stoop. I was inside the threshold of the door with the knife, hidden from the guys’ view, behind Carlton. The white guys had bats. The lead, white guy apologized for coming to our house, for being disrespectful. Eric said, “It’s cool. We understand — would probably do the same thing.” They went back into the night. We placed them in a room in our minds, like a prayer. We talked it out all night.
“Man, I had a knife in my hand. For real though!”
“I know. For real!” said Carlton.
“How are you gone come to someone’s house, knock on the door, be disrespectful, and NOT get your ass whooped?!” Eric said.
It was so crazy to us. We didn’t back down. We were incrementally moving into position in case something popped off. We were young, black men on our own. We only had each other. It all could have gone wrong. A choice to not bust out, full of bravado — this choice was grace. This choice didn’t land me in jail, and I didn’t kill or harm anyone. I went on to receive my associates degree in Architectural Engineering. That was great, but it meant nothing since ITT Technical Institute wasn’t an accredited school. Another butt-kicking lesson that would haunt my finances for years.
A second choice-altering moment occurred when I was coming home from work at my third-shift gig at ITT/ACD. We made SINCGAR radios for the government. It was a good, clean, hourly, union job that helped me pay off those school loans. I was driving east to a stoplight at West Rudisill and Hanna Street. I closed my eyes for what seemed like a blink. I went through the red light on Rudisill, and a car coming north on Hanna hit me on the passenger side of my Somerset. My car spun and hit a woman in her car. I was then facing west, like her. Thank goodness no one got killed. Thank goodness no one got seriously hurt. My car was totaled. At the hospital, I saw the woman’s husband holding their little son. I asked him was she all right. He was kind. He said she was shaken up. He put his free hand on me. My heart could’ve fell to my feet. I watched him and his child greet her. I closed my eyes, thanked my higher power I didn’t take a mother away from her son or a wife away from her husband. The next day I discovered my fault with it all. My mother asked, “What are you giving up?” I was rocked! I had been overextending myself, looking to achieve some American dream, wanting perfection as a worker, student, son, boyfriend, and community leader, but failing. I was concerned. My mother was concerned. My girlfriend was concerned. I worked a full-time and part-time gig. I attended college. I sang in two choirs and a gospel group (Music and Gentlemen). I was a member of Concerned African American Men (CAAM), Big Brothers Big Sisters, Mastering the Possibilities, the Black Collegiate Caucus, President of the Forensics Club, and a few other organizations. I thought about all the middle and high schoolers I talked to about attending college. I thought about the woman I could’ve killed, and her family. I thought about the driver and his passenger as their eyes must’ve come out of their sockets when I went through the red light. Like the blinding sun, my mother’s question reverberated inside my mind. With Mama’s nudge, I made the choice to focus on finishing undergrad. I’d fully focus on my education, and afterwards, I’d focus more on facilitating my community. This choice solidified my voice. It helped me to say NO when I used to say YES to everything. I’m imperfect, and, still, I have responsibility on an even larger scale because the choices I make can be the difference between life and death. This choice moved me to want to attend graduate school after receiving my B.A. and minor.
The last choice-altering moment occurred when one of my professors at IPFW had SIUC send me scholarship applications. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline for the scholarships, but SIUC was searching for GAs. To better prepare for my jaunt to becoming a poet, I left Fort Wayne. As much as I wanted to continue my education, as a GA, an inner fear growled, You’re from the ghetto! You can’t do it! You aren’t graduate material! The self-doubt was debilitating. My engagement — terminated. I quit my job of thirteen years. I attended the funeral of a family member (a murder-suicide), before reaching Carbondale. I was in a dark place — dislocated from my soul and body — from my loves, family, the friends my life made music with. That time was musicless, as if someone had snatched the dance out my body. I had given up everything to go to grad school. I was thirty-six years old and starting from the beginning, again. Again, the consequences were dire. All I knew was that I didn’t give up everything for nothing. I finally took the advice I gave all my friends who left to partake in their dreams. I stepped out on the belief that I had something to share with the world. With that, I attended my first semester of grad school. That was 9/11.
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Fear’s a child wanting what it wants. My choices helped me quell fear. My voice was paramount in the above examples. Had I not made those choices or taken advantage of those opportunities, I wouldn’t be writing this today.
Own and hone your voice, and you’ll have many chances to address choices. Your choices will enhance opportunities those who are voiceless never own. Instead of being stuck with fear, be stuck in choices that’ll move you into your successes. People suggested I be an engineer or state trooper. Why would I be a poet? I’m a Dreamist — a dreamer and a realist. I wanted to be a poet. Today, I am.
This essay is part of a citizen-led book project in Fort Wayne called FORTHCOMING: Considering the Future State of Our City. To learn more and read additional essays, visit the Foreword and Preface.
Curtis L. Crisler was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. He received a BA in English, with a minor in Theatre, from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW, now PFW), and he received his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Crisler has five full-length poetry books, two YA books, and five poetry chapbooks. Crisler’s awarded fellowships and residencies come from the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh (COA/P), Cave Canem, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Soul Mountain (Connecticut), a guest resident at Hamline University (Minnesota), a guest resident at Words on the Go (Indiana), and Writer-in-Residence (Writers @ The Carr Program) sponsored by Poets & Writers, INC (Michigan). Crisler’s grants and awards come from a Library Scholars Grant Award, a RHINO Founder’s Award, Indiana Arts Commission Grants, Eric Hoffer Awards, the Sterling Plumpp First Voices Poetry Award, and he was nominated for the Eliot Rosewater Award and a Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award. Crisler’s poetry has been adapted to theatrical productions in New York and Chicago, and he’s been anthologized in various publications, as well as a variety of magazines and journals. He was commissioned for William Morris (a glass artist) by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (FWMoA). He’s been a Contributing Poetry Editor for Aquarius Press and a Poetry Editor for Human Equity through Art (HEArt). Crisler’s work exhibits what he calls an urban Midwestern sensibility (uMs). What uMs exemplifies is “the community and creativity of the varied relationships of descendants from the first through second waves of the southern migration, exploring their connections to place/environment, history, family, and self.” Also, he created the poetry form the sonastic and the Indiana Chitlin Circuit (a small circuit bringing writers to Ft. Wayne). Crisler is Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne.